1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a television receiver and, more particularly, to a television receiver in which character signals are generated by a character signal generating circuit on the basis of control data and supplied to display control means adapted for displaying the control data in a subsidiary screen area provided in a portion of or adjacent to a main screen area in which an image by input video signals is displayed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a television receiver, adjustment or setting of the following parameters, by way of example, may be made with the aid of a commander of an operating section or a remote control operation command unit on the front surface of the television receiver:
i) channel switching; PA0 ii) sound volume; PA0 iii) color hue; PA0 iv) saturation; PA0 v) brightness (luminance); PA0 vi) sharpness; PA0 vii) high frequency sounds; PA0 viii) low frequency sounds; and PA0 ix) sound volume balancing of left and right speakers.
According to the conventional practice in making adjustments in these parameters, the operator selects the parameter desired to be adjusted by means of a commander. Then, letters or characters 40, indicative of the selected adjustment parameter, such as the color hue, and a number of level bars 41, indicative of the current setting value of the selected parameter, are then displayed, as an aid or guidance to the adjustment operation, in a lower region of a viewing screen 42, by a superimpose function. The operator then performs an adjustment operation, while checking or monitoring the state of the level bars 41 and the quality of the picture displayed on the screen 42, until the desired picture quality is achieved.
Such display of the setting level at the lower zone of the viewing screen 42 by the above mentioned superimpose function is inconvenient in that only one selected item can be displayed at a time while the setting levels of the remaining adjustment items cannot be viewed simultaneously.
When setting levels of all of the adjustment parameters are displayed simultaneously by the superimpose function, the level bars 46 indicating the setting levels are displayed over the entire screen 45, as shown in FIG. 2, making it difficult for the operator to observe the picture quality on the viewing screen 45.
Most of the recent television receivers are provided with various special functions, including a program presenting function, according to which the time and channel of a desired broadcasting program are preset and the power source of the television receiver is turned on at exactly the preset time and the channel is set to the preset channel, or a program presetting and recording function, according to which a video tape recorder (VTR) is operatively linked with the television receiver to record the preset broadcasting program during the preset time. However, with an increase in the number of special functions, it becomes necessary for the user to become familiar with a large number of these functions, including the sequence of the operations for each of these functions with the result that the user forgets how to operate the various functions of the television receiver.